Magnets rely on exposure to reinforce brand, improve sales
Author: Bill Laforme
November 10, 2009

When it comes to marketing, visibility is everything.

The key to a successful marketing campaign is brand building, creating a strong presence for your company that is linked not just to its name or product, but to its logo and its reputation.

Once thought to be just for consumer products, branding is increasingly important for small businesses in any industry.

"A brand is a relationship between customers and a company, between customers and a product, and, like all relationship, it has great complexities and great rewards," wrote Nancy F. Koehn, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the author of Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell, in a column on BNET.com. "It requires great investment, and it delivers significant return."

Some of the most important aspects to develop when building a brand are presence, visibility and exposure.

Printed promotional materials such as custom magnets have been found to be effective ways of increasing all of the above, as they are often positioned directly in a consumer's line of vision on a daily basis, thereby boosting visibility and exposure.

For example, a small business that offers a frequently used service or product, perhaps in the pet industry or the home cleaning sector, would benefit from distributing refrigerator magnets with the company name, logo, phone number and tag phrase.

This strategy builds on the concept of primacy and subconscious exposure.

When a consumer goes to open the refrigerator, they will always look at the magnet, whether or not they are conscious of doing so; conscious exposure may trigger reminders to use the service, such as getting the house cleaned or taking the dog to be groomed, while unconscious exposure increases the likelihood that the company on the magnet will be chosen the next time that service or product is needed.

In addition to the psychological factors at play, the effect may be explained just as simply by the fact that people are always looking for the "easy way out" - consumers are more likely to patronize a business for which the contact information is readily at hand.

Small businesses using promotional magnets should remember to keep their branding consistent across platforms - logos and taglines on magnets should be the same as those on brochures, postcards, flyers and business cards, to further reinforce the brand.